I came across the words "Boyz", and "EZ" in English, and wondered if any Kanji characters were used in the same way. Thank you very much.
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I know it happens a lot in casual speech, and so it might happen when you use hiragana or katakana, but I don't think it would happen with kanji– Felipe Chaves de OliveiraMar 9, 2017 at 19:12
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What about puns (especially those based on homophones) or Kanji that get assigned a different reading (like 少年 with ボーイズ as furigana)?– BibliocharylodisMar 9, 2017 at 20:16
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You already know such examples, but you mean you want kanji examples?– narutoMar 9, 2017 at 21:56
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@naruto Yes please.– Jack BosmaMar 9, 2017 at 21:59
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1 Answer
(It's easier to give examples using kana (それでわ, もうやめれ, 止めろください, ぬこ, イソターネット, メーノレ, ふいんき, ようつべ, ...), but you want examples with kanji? Okay...)
{{pad}} For historical reasons Japanese kanij compounds can have dozens of 同音異字語 (homophones; words that share the same reading but have different kanji). And some argot and net-slang words are based on this fact. Perhaps the best-known example is 厨房, which is from a misspelling(?) of 中坊 (cf. Use of 厨 on the Internet). Similar examples are writing 脂肪【しぼう】 ("fat") instead of 死亡【しぼう】 ("death"), writing 妊娠【にんしん】 ("pregnant") instead of 任信【にんしん】 ("Nintendo fanboy").
{{pad}} Many slang words were made by creating funny ateji for existing words (including loanwords). 夜露死苦 meaning よろしく is a typical example (cf. Origin of 夜露死苦?) Other famous examples are 鯖【さば】 meaning server, プロ串【くし】 (or just 串) meaning proxy, 垢【あか】 meaning account, 尼【あま】 meaning Amazon.co.jp, 裏山【うらやま】 meaning うらやましい ("I envy it").
Most of the words I wrote here are more or less dirty or at least heavily slangy, so please don't try to use them. I won't.
